Dear David Kliegman,

Dear David Kliegman,

at the outset, let me forward to you and your Okanogan colleagues my sincere cumpliments on an excellent work done. We can appreciate your work very well since we are fighting the same fight, against the same culprits, down here in Brazil.

In Brazil, Kinross is slowly killing our creeks and the people of Paracatu, a 90,000 inhabitants town in northwestern Minas Gerais State. Kinross runs an open pit gold mine within the urban environment of Paracatu. Believe it or not, technically we are IN the open pit gold mine.


Kinross has destroyed one neighborhood and bought part of another neighborhood to open more room for its mine at Morro do Ouro (the "Gold Mountain").

The governmental permits for this mine have been given by corrupt and incompetent local and state officials, early in 1987. This mine should have never been permited. At least not as it was. The mine's ore is mainly arsenopyrite of low gold grade (0.4 grams/ton). Some 300 million tons of tailings have been discharged in a huge tailings dam already. As if this was not bad enough, they now plan to build a second tailings dam for some 1.2 billion tons of slam. This is part of Kinross' expansion phase III in Paracatu.

I have founded the Acangau Foundation in 1991, and then moved to Germany for doctoral studies, then to Japan, and back to São Paulo, Brazil.

I started our struggle against the socio-environmental destruction of the mining company early in 2007, when I moved to Paracatu. At that time, the local Public Prosecutor asked me to carry a study on the socio-environmental impacts of Kinross' Expansion Project III. The starring results of this study have been forwarded to the government and have been published in a local newspaper as well.

Late in 2007, Dr. Serrano Neves, State Prosecutor and founding-member of the Serrano Neves Institute joined us in our struggles. This was a fundamental acquisition that has opened the way to significant accomplishments. See, for example, the documentary DVD in www.alertaparacatu.blogspot.com.

We are in the process of passing a water protection law in Paracatu, and the Kinross lobbies are against the law.

We are also fighting for the realization of an epidemiological study on the chronic poisoning of the Paracatu population by air-borne arsenic. Kinross and its local supporters are against this study too.

Paracatu is a rich land, though its people are very poor. This is a circumstance that poses a big challenge. But we managed to make the difference so far.

Since we are brothers-in-fight, I would like to propose some form of alliance between us. What if we cellebrated the Okanogan-Acangau alliance for a better, common future?

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Yours Sincerely,

Sergio